


Our scars, still fresh

by FrozenBrownie



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1919 - Freeform, Albus is unconscious and Newt tries to fix that, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Never search for deadly bats on your own kids, Possessive Gellert, Sick Albus, good-ish Gellert, sarcastic Newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 11:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17283407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenBrownie/pseuds/FrozenBrownie
Summary: What does it take to make Gellert Grindelwald cooperate with Newt Scamander before the whole disaster of New York goes down?A poisoned, unconscious Albus, apparently.





	Our scars, still fresh

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Happy New Year!  
> I've promised another Grindeldore Oneshots in the comments of my last one, although I confess that I didn't mean to keep it so soon already. But here I am, delivering a small piece of interaction between the two characters least likely to work in line with one another. It started as crack and became ouch somewhere in the middle.   
> Thanks so much to Nacho aka [bloodbetrothed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinitySoldier/pseuds/bloodbetrothed) for betareading!

Drooping eyelids, fingers dangling from both sides of the bed, his skin sickly pale and sweating, auburn hair streaming down his pillow in stark contrast to the perfect white linen. Half awake, half drifting. Neither sleeping nor in coma. Albus looked like the picture of a broken doll that someone had rattled too hard once too often and Gellert waited, waited for the triumph to come. A simple spell, a slight pressure to nose and mouth even would have been enough to get rid of his greatest enemy. The one man capable of becoming downright dangerous to him, his only equal. His betrothed.   
„What have they done to you, my Albus?" Gellert traced the tiny droplets of salty sweat on his temples and wiped them away with the edges of his sleeves, caught, captured, mesmerized. It would have been so ridiculously simple, the young Magizoologist that had hovered anxiously at his side, waiting for an antidote to work, was out cold for an hour at least. And yet... And yet.  
  
A hand shot out to catch his right sided wrist in a vice-like grip, thin fingers bestowed with a considerable strength that took Gellert by surprise. Tendrils of sparkling magic, pure as the outbursts of a child under ten, bored their way into his skin and around both his arms until he had to surrender to that pull. Albus' eyes were open, but his stare not his own, heavenly blue, glassy, motionless. Lifeless.   
Merlin and Morgana, what had befallen him?  
  
As soon as Gellert hit the mattress in an awkward angle, barely able to sit up properly due to the hold that Albus had on him (and if that didn't sum up the past years in a nutshell) their pendant around his own neck started glowing as it had done in that perfect summer now exactly twenty years ago. It weakened Gellert's silent struggling, so shockingly dumbfounded and unable to utter a single word. To have Albus touch him again, skin on skin, as perverse as the situation made it to be, rendered him disgustingly helpless.   
There were scars on Albus' arms. His sleeves had slipped back, made of a simple fabric instead of the rich wool or linen that he loved so much, depending on the day's mood. Thin and white they crisscrossed his once perfect skin. Gellert forgot to fight against the deadly grip for just a second and like that, it was over. Albus fell back into the cushions as if suddenly left by his mesmerizing soul, his eyes slipped closed and kicked Gellert into a panic he had never known before. Where his beloved’s breath slowed, he started hyperventilating as soon as his lips consented to part again, exhaling a sound beyond all dignity.  
“Not like this. You're wrong, Al, this is not how you will - this is not – _fuck,_ “ he murmured as if possessed by one of the ghosts haunting Hogwarts’ halls unsupervised. He got up like a spring and hit the unconscious boy on the floor right in the face, twice, as hard as he dared. His Stupors were strong, he knew without false humility, but not deadly. Something was taking his Albus away to the next realm and Gellert Grindelwald would not let that happen. If a mediocre Magizoologist who had somehow managed to gain Albus' attention was the only key to this ugly riddle, fine, so be it, to hell with principles.  
  
He got impatient before the boy had the chance to wake up fully. The barked “Enervate!" shot through him by Gellert's right hand which closed around the thin, pale neck of that stupid animal cuddler, kicking his heartbeat up a notch or two. Oh, power was glorious.   
“Give me your name if you want to live!” Frantically he was beaten against his wrist and only let loose a bit to allow the idiot to answer. His eyes got as large as plates and through the coughing he rasped:  
“Scamander. Newt. Would you – please – I’m unarmed, Merlin’s sake!”  
“Newton Scamander, you'll save your only friend today", Gellert declared and tossed the young man to the floor like a rag doll, but underestimated him. Scamander was up on his feet in a flash, wand in hand without trembling, if swaying slightly. His eyes strayed to Albus in a motion so quick, others would have missed it.   
“What have you done to him?"  
Him. Not Scamander. That idiot wasn't even concerned for his own health.   
“I wouldn't raise a finger against him, Mister Scamander, believe me or not, I don't care. I'd apologize for knocking you on your bony ass, but we don't have time to lose and I need to know what happened to him _now_."  
There was a moment of hesitation, narrowed, bright eyes observing him from head to toe. Gellert still had no clue how he got into Hogwarts in the first place, heavily warded as it was; one could practically taste the magic of a thousand wizards and witches long since passed away in the air. It made the tiny hairs on his arms stand on end. Already, he despised this place without having seen its full beauty which Albus would never shut up about, two decades ago.   
“A Mortis Bat bit him, at least that's what he told me before falling into this state, but it doesn't match up. It's poisonous, yes, but not this deadly, especially not around Britain. I have encountered a flock of them in South Africa which had a particularly strong poison due to a special kind of fly they fed on only there cause of the-"  
  
“For fuck's sake," Gellert growled and shut the idiot up by pushing him to his open suit case on a chair next to the bed with a grand gesture that made his fingertips tingle. Puzzled and scowling, he stared at his own hand. Wandless magic came so naturally to him that he sparsely even noticed it nowadays.  
Scamander, already getting back to work instead of cowering before him, glanced at Gellert through his fringe of boringly brown hair, never standing up straight.   
“Every creature has its traits and quirks, there is always the possibility of inter-species breeding, which would lead to different traits, particularly in the venom. A plain bat wouldn't survive intercourse with a Mortis Bat, but to assume that we know all kinds of bats there are, especially in dark, rainy Britain goes against all basic common sense. Do you believe in the unknown, Mister Grindelwald? The things yet to be discovered?"  
“You know who I am, then. Good. I do believe that you're a useless troublemaker who talks too much. Might you be the boy who Albus lamented in his last speech in front of the entire Ministry about? Fired from Hogwarts, weren’t you?" Newt inclined his head, his strange fit of bravery needed for eye contact with the greatest wizard in the current world ended abruptly.   
“Not my fault," he replied very quietly and nodded awkwardly to Albus' still form half slipped under the covers. “And not his, either. I need to go down into my case, got a laboratory there. You stay right where you are, Mister Grindelwald. Professor Dumbledore is a dear friend of mine and I don't respond kindly to threats to those close to me." Turning his back to Gellert before the latter got the chance to tell him exactly how close he allowed anyone to come to Albus, Scamander opened the second case lying on the floor and hurried into it with an ease speaking of regular practice. What a naïve simpleton... Turning his back to Gellert Grindelwald, of all people, and threatening him!  
Albus made a little noise in suffering and just like that, all thoughts of murdering that Hufflepuff idiot left him. Well. He would get rid of Scamander later, once the greater good didn't need him anymore.  
  
The second of the leather cases contained some number of potions, dried and fresh plants, the like. Basic ingredients for healing without having to bother with the difficult spells needed. In his haste, Gellert all but forgot the lessons of his youth. Only one thought stood out clearly to that bitter feeling of halting at a parting path without the time to reconsider: Albus was beyond the point of a Bezoar helping.   
A moan erupted from the bed, pained and so very different than the ones that he once had sought to set free in Albus, his back a perfect bridge in ecstasy, eyes closed, smiling… Gellert shook his head hard. Now was not the time to get lost in times long since passed.   
Three big strides took him to the bedside where he sunk onto the soft crimson blanket. The sight scared him with the kind of urgency that had last overcome him when Ariana Dumbledore had been struck by a ricochet, consequently dropping dead, out as a light before she hit the dusty kitchen floor. On Albus’ slender neck there sat the two red dots that clearly marked a bite of some kind, but a vampire’s fangs were wider apart and the wounds would have been deeper (and Albus not alive and fighting anymore.) In both of his hands, palms up with slack, cool fingers, magic pooled like milk. From the very walls there crept a colourful fog that seemed to shift and never stopped before the shields that Gellert threw from his wand. Like twisted ropes it manifested to something glowing, akin to light but not quite there, and in slow anguish Gellert had to watch as they slithered to Albus’ motionless hands. Red and gold, intertwined, blue and bronze, yellow and black, green and silver. With an almost feral snarl, he took both of Albus’ palms into his own, holding them as close to his heart as he dared. He all but slipped from the bed, so close needed he to sit on the edge.   
“SCAMANDER!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs and threw up a mighty shield with a twitch of his left index finger to envelope them both, but the completely oblivious Albus started to tremble so violently that Gellert took it down again. The shimmering cage blinked out of existence, smoking, to be replaced with the ghostly ropes.   
  
From the open case – or the pocket dimension, rather – erupted a clamour as if Scamander had stumbled over stacked buckets, something howled in protest, answered by shushing words of a kindness that had no place in this moment. Out of it poked the mop of brownish hair, followed by slightly tanned, freckled features. Scamander’s eyes widened comically, Gellert saw it only briefly but dared not look at him directly for fear of giving his own emotions away. The blood vial of their vow burned so intensely, there was absolutely no doubt as to what was happening exactly.   
“Oh. Oh, look at that! This- this is beautiful.” Scamander jumped out of his case fully, a book in hand that didn’t seem printed at the first glance, but written in by a feather’s scratch. What place that fascinated smile had illuminating the boy’s shy face, Gellert had no idea.   
“Quite interesting, yes, would you want to hold a speech about it at Albus’ funeral?” he snapped, but still the idiotic Hufflepuff had the guts to shake his head slightly, not once looking away from the spectacle. Never mind that Gellert was still grasping Albus’ fingers as if they might slip from his at any second now.   
“No, you don’t understand. Are you ignorant to the history of Hogwarts, Mister Grindelwald? Those are the colours of our four houses. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin, the second to last being mine.”  
“Yes, I’m aware that your kind values something weak and feeble like friendship over striving for true greatness or running head-first into trouble because of some unfortunate in-bred bravery.”  
“So you are aware of the houses, after all. Then why are you of all people panicking? Hogwarts is protecting Professor Dumbledore, maybe because Headmaster Black favours him, I’ve no idea. What worries me more is the duration of that protection. Mortis Bats are a pain to catch, which I would have to do to produce the antidote, fortunately I already had that in my stocks, but…”  
“You failed,” Gellert concluded, those two words quick and relentless as a whip. They didn’t miss their target. Scamander lowered his head and only squinted upwards through his thick bangs of hair so that one couldn’t look him directly in the eye, but he could observe his surroundings at least partly. He was just another scared little sheep, an odd one, choosing to blend entirely into a crowd without any ambitions. Maybe he’d have made a pretty little figure on Gellert’s side of the bigger game afoot, had Albus not taken him in. Scamander wouldn’t have been here otherwise. Why, for Morgana’s sake? What was so special about the idiot?  
  
Now he stepped as close as he dared, always keeping an eye on Gellert as one might have done with a feral animal. His gaze flickered between him and the comatose Albus, not even bothering to be offended by their tightly linked fingers. It got too much very fast and Gellert felt that he was absolutely useless here, but something had summoned him in the first place. He had been sitting on his balcony, drinking coffee, taking a moment to appreciate the beauty of the Alps, plotting, planning, just enjoying the quiet of Nurmengard, and within a heartbeat he’d been… Apparated from the outside. As if somebody had tossed a Portkey at him that triggered in exactly the right second at skin contact. Such things never happened without reason and his dreams had gone completely haywire for a while now, already. Gellert didn’t believe in coincidences.   
Scamander cleared his throat, looking downwards to his feet again, making him shoot up from the bed as if burned on his backside. For a second, they held eye contact almost on even ground. Not much height difference separated them, but a world of difference in power. How could anyone _not_ succumb to a mighty headache in this room, drenched in magic so thoroughly you could taste it?  
Scamander’s gaze caught at the centre of Gellert’s grey unbuttoned jacket, or rather, the blood vial embedded in the silver pendant resting on his vest. He stood up straighter, drawing to his full height and pressing back his broad shoulders.   
“Is that the vessel of a blood oath?”  
“Congratulations, you observed the obvious for anyone not completely blind and deaf to magic’s finer vibrations,” he deadpanned and swivelled around to stalk to the window pane, just to do something, perhaps even open it if possible. The air was getting a bit too thick to his liking and just running through the entire damned castle to get out of here wasn’t an option. Not as long as Albus lay on his bed, dying.   
Shuffling behind him told him everything of Scamander’s exact whereabouts, the ruffling of fabric, a quickened breath.   
“But that explains it all! Mortis Bats react extremely badly to anything strange in the blood they drink, a blood curse or the additional magic of an unborn child, which is why they never bite pregnant witches.” His voice got more distant as he rambled on, Gellert didn’t have to turn around to guess where Scamander was disappearing to again. Indeed, as he stalked back to the open suitcase, there was a clatter of metallic objects and some unintelligible animal sounds; mooing, bleating, hissing. Lords, he really didn’t want to know what creatures exactly lived down there.   
“Irrelevant, Mister Scamander!”  
“Yes, yes, I know,” Scamander replied quickly and came back up, Gellert hastening out of the way with his hands behind his back. That idiot was his only hope to wake Albus up and cure him in the process, he wasn’t allowed to strangle him yet. Scamander had brought a small, but no doubt viciously sharp knife and a bowl of olive wood with him, not quite looking at Gellert, but it wasn’t shyness that kept him from just spitting it out. Gellert eyed him sceptically and stepped between him and Albus’ prone form almost unconsciously, his wand slipped into his right hand unseen.   
“Bloodletting is a bit out of fashion, you know. Has been for some two hundred years now,” he drawled not without effect. Scamander looked anywhere but at him, nodded and seemed to grasp for words.   
“I, ah, will need a bit of yours, actually. In fact, in some parts of Egypt that I visited…”  
“Scamander!” Heavens above, how had Albus managed to keep his sanity while that boy attended Hogwarts?! The young man in question took a deep breath, stood a little straighter and made eye contact with Gellert without hiding behind his hair, for once. His eyes were of a deep forest green.   
“Yes. Right. Sir, I will need exactly as much blood of you as both of you used in forming that vessel. I don’t care for the story behind that, you don’t need to tell me to shut up for the sixth time today, I know what I’m doing and it’s only up to you now if Professor Dumbledore lives or dies. Will you cooperate?”  
Ah. There. Not a complete simpleton, after all. Gellert scowled at him silently for being addressed so frankly, but Albus was twitching underneath the colourful ropes of Hogwarts’ magic, pale as death. They were running out of time.   
  
Abruptly, Gellert forced his grey sleeves back up to his elbows and sunk onto the edge of the mattress once more. From the second suit case, Scamander produced a small vial half-filled with a see-through liquid in it that sloshed around a bit too slow to be water.  
“Right hand, palm, a cut completely across it. It didn’t leave a scar on me, while it did on Albus, as far as I know. Take what you need and not a drop more if you want to get out of this room alive.” None of those whipping words seemed to impress him, quite the contrary. He examined Gellert’s right palm without touching it and leaned so far over the crimson bed that he should have tripped any moment, but he didn’t. An expression of utter concentration made his features look harder than they were, his worry so clearly visible in his eyes, he could have been Albus’ son. So very young… Twenty? A year or two above that?  
“If you’re talking of physical scars, you’re right, but magically, you couldn’t be more wrong. With making that vow, whatever it was, you bound yourself to him as much as in reverse, which means that this unlucky Mortis Bat tapped into your bond with its bite and presumably got killed by it an hour later. It’s too much for a creature so small, you see, and I pity it, as much damage as it did. I would recommend not getting bitten by a vampire, neither of you,” he explained and not once rose to look at Gellert during his work. He opened the vial with the antidote – what else would it have been? – and poured it into Albus’ left palm where a line so white anyone not closely examining it would have missed it ran across.   
“If you hurt him in any way, Mister Scamander…”  
“You’ll probably rip my arms and legs off, I know. Your hand, please.”  
Very reluctantly, he did as told. His fingers were rougher than they had been, so long ago, and Albus’ still soft from writing and teaching only. The pain from the cut was the same, but he noticed it more now because he felt so exposed under the scrutinizing gaze of Newt Scamander. He cared more for the process than for the meaning of it, no doubt, but still… Gellert’s blood dripped into Albus’ inviting hand, mixed with the antidote and under a clearly spoken spell sank in through his skin without so much as a hiss. He twitched again, the Gryffindor rope holding down his left arm retreated enough not to constrict the blood flow or involuntary movements. Scamander stood totally upright now, wand in hand so casually as if he had forgotten about it altogether. Its tip still glowed white.   
  
“I thought you needed to cut him, too.” A smile lit up his face, shaking his head.   
“Heavens, no, we don’t want to form another blood vow or magically marry you, Mister Grindelwald. I don’t have the authority for that. See? It works! He’s regaining some colour, not so pale and sweating more. The fever is breaking, then.” For all that annoyed Gellert about him, he had to admit the professionality and the knowledge so plainly visible. His own wound was healing already, he didn’t need a wand for that, just a slow stroke of his thumb over the cut. Silenced for once, he only looked down, observed the magic doing what it was supposed to do, watched Hogwarts’ cage-like protections dissolve into nothing but air. His blood was running in Albus’ veins now, once more. How the tables had turned…   
“Not a word about all of this must get out, Mister Scamander. Am I quite clear there?” Scamander nodded, still thinly smiling.   
“Of course. I’m not so keen on being associated with you, and don’t get me started on the question how in the world a disaster like this managed to overrule all of Hogwarts’ barriers against Apparition and people spontaneously appearing in a teacher’s quarters. Headmaster Black would be delighted.” Gellert got up in a fluent motion and bowed a little, only out of gratitude and the respect for the younger Scamander that wormed its way into his mind. He’d think about that later.   
“And you won’t be the one delivering the news. I advise you to conceal that case and stay until Albus wakes up. He always hated waking up alone and disorientated when he was sick.” Scamander looked up, surprise showing in every freckled inch of his soft face.   
“You’re going to just disappear again, then? Leave him like this?” Gellert only barely managed not to snap at him.   
“Am I to stay and be captured?” He inclined his head and not-quite-looked at him, shrugging, hesitating.   
“Think about the alternative. Whatever history the two of you have... I’m very sure he’d happily accept you back. He’s lonely. Always was, as long as I had the honour of knowing him.” Something deep within his proud heart stirred, uncurled like a snake basking in the first sunlight of a spring breaking. Had Albus truly chosen nobody else as his partner, kept to celibacy, devoted only to Hogwarts? Already halfway out the door, Gellert stopped dead in his tracks, dangerously close to giving in. He was not to be seen by anyone else, too great the risk of being withheld from his destined task to find the Deathly Hallows. Newt Scamander wasn’t a threat. He was so very young, barely above 20… And still, Gellert had heard of a reckless but painfully modest Magizoologist freeing dragons on the eastern front in the Great War left and right.   
“For having been expelled from this castle, you’re bold, Mister Scamander. You do know who you are speaking to, don’t you?”  
“To a desperate, arrogant man with views that I can’t support, yes, I do, Sir, but if Professor Dumbledore holds you as dear as to forge a blood pact with you… At least let him know where he can find you once he has made a full recovery.”  
“And not a day earlier,” Gellert added, giving in to temptation. Maybe Albus was as tired of their silence as he was, especially after his boyhood visions of a war worse than even mankind could have imagined before 1914 came true so forcefully. And a new one was brewing on the horizon already, so obvious once he read the signs of Europe like the lines on Albus’ palms. Slowly, very slowly he took off the necklace that he had impressed his equal with on their first day in that graveyard in Godric’s Hollow, pulled it over his head, smoothed his short, blond hair back down and clutched the sign of the Hallows so tightly as if his life depended on it.  
In a way, it did.   
  
Scamander stepped back almost respectfully, or he was just cautious. Not a word left his pale lips while Gellert crossed the distance to the bed too large for only one person. Albus lay still now, but sleeping peacefully, the glow of the Houses was gone. A whisper with the tip of Gellert’s wand touching the triangle, the line, the circle, a soft sound like wind passing through the circular room and it was done. Carefully he placed the necklace on the nightstand, next to a yellow candle and Albus’ wand.   
“Alright. I’m leaving this with him. He’ll know what to make of it and you’re not to ask questions, boy, remember that.”  
“I’d say thank you if I was a hundred percent sure not to make a big mistake here. May I tell him of your role in his healing or will you throw me off a cliff then?” Was that a teasing twinkle there in that idiot’s eye? Gellert only huffed and made his way back to the door so quickly as if nothing ever happened in there. Pretending his other half wasn’t sleeping within his grasp, vulnerable, no longer dying but without any proper protection. Scamander didn’t count. Not really.  
Maybe a tiny bit.   
“Tell him all you want, I’m sure he’s going to be delighted to have you back unharmed. And, Mister Scamander?”  
“Yes?”  
“Make sure he stays far away from any Mortis Bats in the future.” The Scamander boy pinned his gaze onto the floor, but gave the tiniest of nods, his shoulders so round it hurt only looking at him. It was obvious that he’d stay here for days and nights if necessary and no Headmaster, no other professor and certainly not even his own Head of House could throw him out if they tried.   
“Yes, Sir. Now get out of Hogwarts, please.”  
Silently blending in with the shadows on his way out, Gellert made sure that their blood vial was still snugly where it belonged. Ah, well. If Albus were to come to him in a few days’ time, fine, if not… Then he’d have his answer to this stupidity; the two of them, aimed against each other like crossbows, ready to fire but withholding in spite of it. He’d brew over such thoughts for weeks, he knew, confined to keeping his fingers still for once.   
With a glass transfigured into a Portkey in hand, an idea snuck into his mind: A letter would perhaps pave the way. A letter. That would do for now.


End file.
